Mauritius’s deputy prime minister has hinted that negotiations with the UK over the future of the Chagos Islands are being held up over the amount of money involved. Under the terms of the original agreement, the UK would relinquish sovereignty to Mauritius over the archipelago but maintain a 99-year lease for Diego Garcia, home to a major UK-US military airbase. As part of the deal, the UK said it would provide a package of financial support to Mauritius, including annual payments and infrastructure investment, but neither side has said how much is involved.
However, a new government in Mauritius, elected since the agreement was first made, has said it wants to see some changes. The proposed deal has also attracted criticism in the UK, with the opposition Conservative party calling it a “monumental failure of statecraft”.
The UK and Mauritius released a joint statement on Friday, saying they were committed to finalising a treaty as quickly as possible. They said “ongoing conversations” were productive.
Mauritius needs “money to get out of the economic mess the previous government got us into, but not at any price, not under any conditions,” Deputy Prime Minister Paul Bérenger said. Speaking in parliament, Bérenger admitted that the UK is keen to complete the deal “before Trump swears in as president on 20 January”.
Marco Rubio, Trump’s pick for secretary of state, has described the deal as a threat to US security.
Last week, in the UK’s House of Commons, Shadow Foreign Secretary Dame Priti Patel accused the Labour government of putting the UK’s national security at risk, ignoring the interests of Chagossians, and “letting our standing go into freefall” in an increasingly dangerous world.
In recent years, the UK has faced rising diplomatic isolation over its claim to the British Indian Ocean Territory, with various United Nations bodies siding with Mauritius.
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